


It Happens

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Prison Break
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-14 07:04:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10531380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: Where there’s sparks, there could be fire, you know. [Post S4.]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was talking to friend about how much higher the stakes would be going into Season 5 if Sara were married to Paul Kellerman instead of this no-name guy we're getting. And then I remembered I wrote that fic years ago. Only, Michael never turned up alive. 
> 
> I have a LOT of ships on this show.

He'd always been ambitious. Ambitious to the point of ridiculousness, Kristine once said. (When she ran his campaign for Congress.)

He did it for a whole term, and he was good at it, as he'd always been good at everything he'd done. Good soldier, good sniper, good lap dog for Caroline Reynolds, good at framing a man for murder, and then setting him free. When his term ended, he found himself unwilling to do it again, and set adrift.

He'd also become good at pining away for a woman he had no right to ever think about.

It had snuck up on him, really. He hadn't prepared himself to care for Sara; he never expected anything except to serve her up on a silver platter at some point. The fact that he had never done that should have made him more aware, but being single-minded helped to block out other unpleasant things he didn't want to deal with. Finding Scofield and Burrows and Scylla had been the thing he focused on for quite a while; then the accolades for his part in that had come in, and the opportunity to run for office had been handed to him. With that in his sights, he’d had little time to see the other empty spaces in his life.

When word got to him that Scofield had died, he put her on his radar. He hired a man who had one job, and one job only: to watch Sara Tancredi-Scofield and her offspring, and make sure that nothing ever harmed them. The Company had been buried, but Paul didn't believe that all enemies had been put six feet under. He hoped, but he didn't know for sure. Even now, six years later, he still considered the possibility because there was no statue of limitations on evil monarchies, even when it appeared all the kings and queens were dead.

He received surveillance pictures periodically, showing Sara and her child in marketplaces in Oaxaca City, Mexico; driving out to the coast in a old Jeep Wrangler to visit Burrows and family; helping at an outdoor clinic in the poor little neighborhood where they'd taken up residence. Whenever the large mailing envelopes arrived, he'd find time alone to thumb through them, and as if on a projector, he watched her life go on.

She'd always had strength of character and determination that reminded him of himself. She seemed to only stand straighter after her husband died, and her shoulders never bowed despite the weight that lay upon them.

He had fantasies. Ones where he coincidentally showed up in Oaxaca.  _Sara? You're kidding me? You live here? I had no idea_. Except that one always ended with her rolling her eyes and walking away, because even in a make-believe world, Sara would not take his bullshit. Other fantasies involved her slapping him and then some kind of brutal sex happening on the beach. Of course that was as farfetched and difficult to believe as their happen chance reunion in the marketplace.

Sometimes when he looked at pictures of Michael Scofield Junior, he wondered things that would surely get him a garrote around the neck again if Dr. Tancredi ever knew he thought them. Words like  _Stepfather_  or  _Uncle Paul_ , or even  _Mommy's Boyfriend_ , would crowd in and then he'd shove the photos back into their envelopes before dropping them in the deep desk drawer with everything else. 

He'd learned there was the life you wanted, and the one you had, and the one you spent the most time thinking about could never be the former, not if you wanted to keep your service revolver clean and polished but not pressed against your temple.

Everything he'd done to set things right could never bless him with what he wanted. He would never deserve that, and he couldn't pretend otherwise.

But he could pretend that one lost weekend with her would satisfy him, and that some day he would go and try. Failing had become something he could endure; not knowing was more painful than not having.

*

It took him quite a bit of time to talk himself into it. And really, it was Kristine who had talked him into it. She didn’t know the whole history of what had happened with Sara (he’d conveniently left out the bathtub incident), but she did have a good grasp of the situation from reading between the lines of what Paul had revealed to her. The bottom line, she said one evening, fed up with his morose face, was that he had a thing for this woman, this woman was a free agent, and why did he keep wasting time? At least if he went and got rejected, he could move on with his life.

Or so his sister thought.

Paul’s biggest problem, obviously, was that he might not survive the rejection. Seeing her face again, knowing the hell she’d been through—raising a child alone—well, he wanted to be her Superman, but he knew even if he’d met her under different circumstances, she would not welcome that intent.

So he boarded a plane at O’Hare, sick to his stomach long before turbulence could cause the problem.

In the sticky sweetness of Oaxaca City in August certainly made him regret his choice of clothing. He’d always dressed the part; he couldn’t seem to help himself. Maybe that should be his first order of business. He checked into the hotel and then went to the market place and bought some shorts and a few colorful button up shirts that screamed tourist. Then he went back to his hotel and stared at the clothing as though it might give him a proper opening line.

He’d weighed the options of just going to her house (because of course he knew where she lived with her son) or trying to concoct a bumping-into-you type meeting somewhere she frequented. He couldn’t think of any scenario where he didn’t just come off looking like an ass. So he’d decided against it.

Of course, going to her house was pretty ballsy, too. But less cheesy. Less assy. Less like an accident, and more like a statement of intent. He would never be her hero, but he could be something of lesser value to her, if she were so inclined.

The vacation clothes made him self-conscious though. He would have felt much more prepared to stand before her in a three-piece suit. Of course, sweating all over her doorstep was pretty unattractive too. So shorts and an orange button up with palms trees on it would have to do.

It took him about 20 minutes to walk from his hotel to the neighborhood Sara Scofield lived in. He’d waited until early evening to make sure she was home from work, but as he approached the door, he wished he had flowers, or a take out dinner, or something on him to make him not look empty handed.

Or empty headed, to have even come here at all. Cold hearted, perhaps. No, he really shouldn’t have done this at all. Why in the world had he let Kris talk him into this?

With his hand poised to knock, he suddenly stepped back, unable to follow through. The houses along this street were all non-descript, but in fairly good shape. This was all he came for, to make sure she had a good roof over her head—that she lived in safety with her child. That Mexico had become her home in a good way.

But he already knew that, didn’t he? Didn’t he have the photographic proof sitting in his desk for his every whim of perusal?

_God._

He was a prick. He was everything he had come there to try to prove to her he wasn’t. The only way to prove it was to  _not_ be there. He needed to get on a plane back to Chicago pronto.

He turned around, walking down the three steps that led to the driveway, and then he saw her, sitting in her car, staring at him. He’d been so deep in thought he hadn’t even heard the old Wrangler pull up, and he suspected it did not have a quiet exhaust system.

He froze, like a tracked and trapped animal, and he’d never in his life wanted the ability to disappear more. Not even when his very existence had been erased at the hand of Bill Kim had he been more aware of his  _being_.

She got out of the car slowly, her eyes never wavering from his face, except to slide in a brief and inquisitive manner over his shirt. She pulled a light sweater and a bulky bag from her passenger seat, dragging them behind her as she cleared the door. Shutting it with a normal shove that didn’t seem to indicate anger, Paul broke eye contact to look in the back seat. He assumed her child would be there, but it was empty.

“Paul?” she asked, and her disbelief explained her lack of reaction. She must have thought she was imagining him.

“Sara,” he said. Clearing his throat, he tried to come up with a witty hello, but the tightness of his words seemed to clog at the top of his voice box.

“Paul Kellerman?” she said again, this time with more certainty, and a very small smile.

The hope that blossomed in his chest at that minute gesture threatened to buckle his knees.

“What in the world…?” she asked, gesturing at him vaguely, as though there were someone beside her that she needed to introduce him to. Folding her arms over the items in her grasp, she tilted her head and then a soft laugh escaped her throat. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

*

Driving along the familiar street, Sara enjoyed the silence that reigned inside her vehicle. She loved her child with a ferocious intensity, but there were times when she would pay cash money for a mute button. Instead, she occasionally got the opportunity to take her almost 6-year-old son up to his Uncle Linc's. She always kissed Lincoln's cheek and hugged Sofia tightly for being willing to watch her boy for a couple of days.

She loved being a mother, but everyone needed a break now and then. She had the good fortune of family, within an hour's drive, and a child who adored his uncle, aunt and cousins deeply because of the time they had spent together. Dropping Mikey at Lincoln's was like bringing him home to his own house, he was so comfortable there.

It allowed Sara 48 hours of guilt free time every once in a while, and she treasured it. Between school for her son, her work at the clinic and being a single parent, her days started early and ended late. She worked hard, and she had much to show for it, and because of that she could take a break in good conscience.

A flash of orange caught her eye as she slowed her car to turn into the drive way at her house. As she pulled to stop, a fleeting feeling of familiarity flooded her. The Hawaiian shirt was all wrong, but the brown hair and aviator sunglasses—that were rather unnecessary at 7:30 in the evening—were very recognizable.

She stared out the window at him as he stood on her doorstep, not doing anything. He looked as though someone had pushed the pause button on the remote control as he was in mid-knock, but then he lowered his hand without actually touching her front door.

Which was fine, because she wasn't home anyway. She had no idea what would bring him to her house, but she felt tension grow within her at the possibilities. There wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that something was left unresolved from six years before, was there? She'd heard about his election to Congress, and she'd even followed his career a bit by reading the  _Sun-Times_  and the  _Tribune_  online. He'd been good to his constituents, something Sara liked to believe was a token kind of penance for all the havoc he'd wreaked, but then been forgiven for so easily.

She didn't harbor bad feelings toward Paul Kellerman, but neither did she expect to ever see him again.

She turned the engine off, but couldn’t seem to drag her eyes away from his position on her front porch. When he turned to leave he noticed her, and even though she couldn’t see his eyes, the expression on his face—part horror, part delight—registered plainly.

Grabbing her stuff, she climbed out of the car, still unable to look away from him. The bright orange shirt was certainly an eyesore, but it also struck her as so out of character for him, she had a hard time not laughing. What in the world was he doing here?

Finding her voice, she identified him with a query, “Paul?” 

He responded, his voice just as soft and polite as she remembered—even when he’d threatened her, he’d had a gentleness that belied what he was capable of. “Sara.” He inclined his head and then coughed a couple more times, a clearly nervous gesture that touched Sara in a way she did not expect.

“Paul Kellerman? What in the world…?” she said aloud, only because the fear that something bad lurked behind his sunglasses had faded away. This was a personal call, though she couldn’t imagine what business, if any, they had just between the two of them.

The reason why suddenly occurred to her, then, and she gathered her purse and jacket against her chest defensively as she looked at him. She couldn’t help the laugh that fell out of her mouth—it seemed too surreal. At any moment, she would wake up and be lying in her bed wondering what the hell Paul Kellerman had been doing in her dreams. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

Again, with the nervous body language, she required no words to know what he wanted, but it still struck her as strange. They’d had a spark, definitely, from the very beginning. Sara couldn’t deny that, and even when she’d believed him to be gay, there had always been a niggling suspicion at the back of her mind. 

And she’d given a part of herself away when she trusted him, and even though that trust had long been revoked, she’d had occasional fond thoughts of him over the years. His work had helped make Michael and Lincoln free, permanently, as well as Fernando, Alex, and herself.

He lifted his hands, his palms up in a helpless gesture, and whether it was a calculated move or not, he said, “I wanted to see you.”

Sara’s long-dead heart responded to the plaintive note. Her oft-neglected body also responded, and she felt her cheeks flush. 

This was not how she expected to end her day.

Straightening from the car door, she moved forward, walking right towards him until she stood in front of him. He flinched, but he didn’t fall back. She stared into his eyes, penetrating the protective shield of his sunglasses until he reached up and jerked them off his face. “Look, I know it’s crazy, and you probably hate me anyway, but I just…” His gaze dropped down, the fall of his eyelashes as they dusted his cheeks as he squeezed his eyes shut reminding her of soft touches and warmth that she hadn’t experienced in a very long time. When he opened his eyes again, he pinned her with pure emotion. “I just needed to see you.” He paused, and when she didn’t respond, he added, “So I’ve seen you. And you look great. Like a million bucks. Like 5 million bucks. Like all the money in the world, really…” he rambled on and then he finished with, “So that’s it. That’s all I needed. I’ll go now.”

He moved around her, gracefully gliding past her left shoulder as though he hadn’t flown thousands of miles; as if coming to see her simply involved a taxicab and twenty bucks. She could hear his feet hitting the sidewalk because he’d worn flip-flops as the finishing touch to his ridiculous outfit, but he didn’t get too far before she turned and said his name out loud.

He paused, but didn’t look back at her. The tension in his spine was visible even through his too-big shirt. “Paul,” she said again, this time her tone insisting that he look her in the eyes. He turned slowly, obeying her without a direct command. 

There was no subterfuge here. She knew what he wanted, and in all honesty, she could tell she wanted it too. She hadn’t known until this moment it was something she could want, and it made her a little dizzy.

Desire. Need. Lust. She’d been checked out from those descriptions for a long time; a self-imposed exile that had not made her particularly unhappy. She’d had other things to do, to focus on. That portion of her had been hibernating for 6 long years, and like the first hot day after a rainy spring, it swamped her with sudden excitement. “You can come inside,” she offered, hoping her voice sounded casual, even though her cheeks had to be red. Heat sometimes spread slowly, warming a path upward until all the parts were of equal temperature. Other times, it flashed out, consuming everything in its path, leaving nothing but crispy remains.

As Paul Kellerman followed Sara Scofield into her house, she wasn’t sure which type she wanted more.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Paul had already removed his sunglasses—under duress—so he didn't need to do so as they entered Sara's house. He stuffed them into the gaping pocket covering his left pectoral, and then stood in the doorway uncertainly. He'd been invited in, but it had not suddenly become comfortable. Tension radiated from both of them now, because if anything, Sara understood perfectly why he had come there. The comprehension in her deep brown eyes had scared him more than the actual feelings had to begin with.

Somewhere along the way his ability to poker his way through a situation had slipped away. Or perhaps it was just her effect on him. Either way, it left him open and vulnerable, a position he had not been in very many times in his adult life.

"Have a seat," Sara said, slinging her bag down on the kitchen table. Paul then stepped forward into the room, taking in the dimensions and aspects of it. The kitchen/dining area/living room were all open, and he could see a few dirty dishes in the sink and a box of cereal sitting on the table top next to her discarded bag. The living room was mostly clean, except for a few cars and trucks that obviously belonged to a child.

The place was tidy. People lived here, but there was also a housekeeper at work.

"Where is your son?" he asked, knowing that to say 'Michael' aloud might bring something up he didn't necessarily want to talk about. Or hear her talk about.

"He's at Linc's," she answered. The ease with which she said Burrows's name hit Paul in a funny way. He watched as she walked over to her phone and hit the play button for her messages. It had been six years. Six years, and her life had become something unlikely for a politician's daughter who had been the chief medical officer at a maximum security prison by the time she was 29.

She had three messages, and Paul caught the differences amongst them, one about a prescription for a patient that had been lost, another about a school meeting, and the third from a sing-songy childish voice belting out  _You Are My Sunshine_ , with a few back up singers. That message ended with, “I love you, Mommy! See you Sunday!”

Sara chuckled quietly to herself and then gestured at the sofa. “Please, have a seat. Would you like something to drink?” she asked as she picked up the phone and wedged it between her shoulder and ear. 

“No, I’m all right,” Paul said, and his voice sounded rusty, like he hadn’t spoken aloud in a while. He cleared his throat, and shuffled closer to the sectional.

“I just need to return this phone call, see if I can get it taken care of tonight. I’ll be a minute.”

“No problem,” he said, before dropping down on the couch.  _No problem_  was right. He was in her house, by her invitation, and he could wait all damn night if he had to. He could feel the triumph fighting its way into his expression and he made an effort not to look at her, just in case she saw it and revoked his privileges.

“Jackie? It’s Sara. Yes, I got the message…” she spoke quickly into the phone and then disappeared into a short hallway that must have led to her bedroom. He could still hear her voice, though the words were indistinguishable, and so he just sat, looking around at the modest little home. 

Little was the most significant thing about it. For two people, he supposed it was more than sufficient, but he wondered if this was all she could afford, or if she liked it here. 

When she returned to the outer room several minutes later, she had finished her phone call, and she had changed from the pants and shirt she’d had on to shorts and a tank top. She was still mostly covered, but Paul could feel his saliva glands start working over time. 

This was the biggest problem in all of this equation: her ridiculous beauty. The woman was statuesque to begin with, and in the intervening years she had put on a little weight, but it was the kind of weight that gave her substance. It meant when (if) she pressed her frame full-length to his, he’d be able to feel every part that made her a woman, the fullness of her breasts, the curve of her belly, the indentation where her thighs came together. Basically, everything that made him want her to begin with.

He could feel the reaction in his gut and he willed himself to not get overexcited or anticipate something that had no guarantee. Looking at her, being near her, speaking to her was reward in itself. The idea of touching her, of holding her, could very well send him into cardiac arrest and make it enjoyable for no one.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“Sure you don’t want something to drink?” she asked again, and his eyes flew open. She was scooping her hair up into a messy ponytail at the back of her head and the glimpse he got of her underarms further spiked his blood pressure for some unknown reason.

“Beer,” he said, the word popping out before he could think better of it, and certainly not in the form of a question, which would have been better.  _Do you have any beer? Why did you invite me in? What the hell am I doing here?_

A small smile lit her features again and she walked over to the refrigerator. “You’re in luck,” she said, glancing at him over her shoulder. “I think there’s one in here from the last time LJ was up.” He found his eyes lingering on the exposed length of her legs as she reached into the depths of the fridge and pulled a long neck bottle from it.

Walking back into the living room, she handed him the bottle after she’d twisted the top off with the hem of her shirt. “I don’t drink,” she reminded him.

He blinked, and hesitated in reaching for the bottle as shame filled him. “Right,” he said.

She wiggled the bottle in front of his face when he didn’t take it. “Water under the bridge, right, Paul?”

His fingers wrapped around hers on the base of the bottle and he waited a beat before responding. “Thank you.” He moved his fingers over hers infinitesimally, holding her gaze. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he could have shared a monologue then about all the things he was sorry about, but it would only have sounded like he was making excuses.

Sara moved her hand out from under his and nodded. “I know. I knew when you came back, when you made things right. And Michael told me–everything. I wanted to thank you that day, but I just didn’t get a chance to say anything, so much happened so fast.”

She sat down on the sectional next to him, though far away from where he’d chosen. In the corner of the right angle, she folded her long, beautiful legs up under her and pulled one of the throw pillows into her arms.

Suddenly her gesture registered with him; he recognized it as the same protective move she’d made outside, crossing her arms in front of her. He’d spent his life studying these types of things, decoding the actions of every kind of person under the sun. But it figured that today of all days, he wasn’t even paying attention to it with regard to her.

He looked away from her and drank deeply from the bottle. “Yeah, well. I guess I’ve wanted to say something to you for years too, but...” he trailed off. There was no way to explain it adequately.

“You’re here now,” she said and he slid his eyes over, capturing her in his peripheral vision.

“I’m here now,” he agreed.

“ _Why_  are you here, now?” she pressed, and Paul had to turn his head to face her fully. He really just wanted to gulp his beer and then run out for more. Tugging on the leg of his shorts, he dropped his eyes away from her face only to have them become fixated on her cleavage. The tank top wasn’t particularly low cut, he just had access to the slight shadow in the center of her chest, the one that hinted at the swells at the top of her bra.

So close, but so far. “How did Michael die?”

_An escape and evade tactic of poor taste, Paul_. Poor taste, but effective.

Sara took a deep breath. “He had a brain tumor. One surgery didn’t remove the entire mass, and nothing could be done when it started to grow again. He went quickly, he hardly had time to suffer, and I was thankful for that.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he meant it.

“I’m sorry, too, every day, for Mikey. He will only know his father through the very distorted window of his uncle and his mother. He’ll think his father was practically a saint, and he’ll never be able to live up to the memory.”

“What about you? How’re you living up to the memory?”

Her low, throaty laugh kicked his libido up into an Orange Alert. Which was fitting because of his ridiculous shirt. “I can’t believe you’re not better at this,” she said.

He laughed too, because if he didn’t, he might cry. “I can’t either,” he confessed, and with that, he finished his beer. Scrambling to his feet, he moved towards the kitchen. “You recycle?”

“Just put it on the counter,” she said.

He followed her instructions and then, once again at a loss, clenched his fists and jammed them onto his hips as he blew out a heavy breath.

“Paul, did you really want this much conversation to interfere with what you came here for?”

*

In her bedroom, Sara had stripped her work clothes and sensible undergarments off, fumbling through the crap on her dresser looking for the container of babywipes. Mikey had been out of diapers for years, but babywipes had become stock around their house because you could mop up just about any sticky substance in a heartbeat with them. She quickly ran one over her armpits and between her legs, because a shower might be in order, but it wasn’t going to happen.

She explained to Jackie how to reissue the missing prescription, directing her to where her secret stash of signed scripts were hidden in her desk. “Fax it over to the drugstore, and then call Senora Contreras back. Tell her she’ll be able to pick up the script tomorrow.”

Hanging up the phone, she pulled out her sexiest bra and panties, which meant they were off white, not white, and threw on a pair of shorts and a ribbed tank that looked casual enough. For all Paul knew, she just wanted to put on cooler clothes. It was August after all, and very warm at almost 8 o’clock in the evening.

Once she was back in the living room, and observing his complete discombobulation, she found that her own discomfort slowly faded. She’d had a long time to come to terms with things. Not just that her husband had been taken from her when he’d barely been her husband at all, but that everything that had happened during those crazy months were like something from a very bizarre dream.

Paul Kellerman had tried to kill her, and she had tried to kill him. Then he’d saved her life in the courtroom, and again when he came and helped Michael put Scylla in the right hands. She might have room to harbor anger and hate, but she’d found that losing Michael was absolutely the worst thing that could happen to her. Everything else faded in comparison.

She didn’t want to talk to Paul about those few short months she’d spent with Michael, or how the only way he’d ever held his child was by putting his hands over her 7-month round belly. She didn't want to talk about how close she'd come in the months after the birth of her son of following his father to wherever he'd gone. The despair had been suffocating and overwhelming, and it was only the constant need her child had had of her that had kept her in this world.

She didn't want to talk about how standing in the setting sunlight on her front porch, feeling the foreign and long dormant pulse of sexual arousal had made her feel both exhilarated and traitorous.

She just wanted him to take her. She wanted him to do what he'd come for. She wanted him to be ruthless, like he once had been, and uncaring of her emotional needs.

When he responded to her demand with "I don't think the conversation interferes with anything," it became clear that he had either lost his ruthlessness altogether or he actually thought talking about it would be good foreplay.

So she tried another tactic. Memory lane could work, as long as they were the right memories. "You tried to kill me. You want to talk about that? I mean, as long as we're rehashing everything?"

He smiled then, the cherubic blossom that had sucked her in over blueberry pie so long ago reminding her forcefully of every moment she'd spent with him, and the almost-hope that she could forget an inmate she'd crossed a line with by crossing the same line with a self-professed homosexual. She remembers a crazy notion of getting them both very drunk, because she was so unsteady during those days, and she'd imagined it would require a whole bottle of tequila to make him straight enough for one night.

"I didn't try to kill you," he murmured, dragging her back to the here and now, even while speaking of the there and then. "If I'd really wanted you dead, you'd be dead. I was a coward then, and I'm a coward now."

She got off the couch when he continued to stand in her kitchen like a lost dog. "I wanted you dead," she said. "And you'd be dead, if it weren't for Michael." The house was so small that it only took five or six steps for her to be within touching distance of him.

"God bless him," he muttered, and she finally found what she was looking for.

"You say you're a coward, but you sure as hell have nerve coming here. Looking at me like that. Expecting."

"I don't expect anything," he bit off.

"Liar," she hissed.

"Throw me out, then, Sara!" He threw an arm up towards the front door. "I walked away. I'd be gone now if you didn't want me here, too."

"Why did you come here?" she demanded. It took all her control not to shout the words.

"I told you. I came to see you."

"And I look great," she mocked.

He nodded. "Good enough to eat."

"You're a bastard."

"Yes."

"But you're still waiting for an engraved invitation, aren't you?"

Color rose in his face, and his body trembled, but she couldn't tell if it was because he wouldn't let himself move or if she'd finally hit the nerve that would cause the most damage.

"I didn't come here to take something you're not willing to give," he said after a long silence.

She scoffed. "Do I seem unwilling?" 

He laughed then, but there was nothing in his face to indicate joy. He shook his head and then dropped his chin to his chest. The wheels cranked, she could see him formulating something, and at the last moment the desperation that he would do nothing clawed at her.

She stepped closer to him, and again he didn't back down. If she took a deep breath, her breasts would have brushed his tent-like shirt. She reached up, gripped the collar so that palm trees crumpled in her fists and asked, "Why are you wearing this crazy shirt?"

His gaze lifted to hers, the turbulance radiating in mirrored complexity from his blue eyes. "It's a long story," he said.

"Paul," she whispered, every moment of loneliness over six years vibrating in her throat.

He finally moved then, his hands hovering just over her hips before clamping on them possessively. Sara couldn't contain the whimper in her throat. It wasn't just that she hadn't been touched with sexual intent in so long--it was that she hadn't even missed it. Now the loss roared through her, and she felt like she had to make up for every moment a hundred times over, but she couldn't breach the barrier. 

If he needed an engraved invitation, she needed an approval that could never reach her ears or her heart. "Please." She never knew if she said it or he did.

When his tongue parted her lips, she knew that summer had arrived, and it was a heatwave.

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Sara had always been pretty traditional when it came to sex. She liked being on the bottom, not because she tended to be submissive, but because she loved to feel the weight of a man on top of her. In her brief time with Michael, they'd slept like that more often than not after making love. With him on top of her, usually still inside her, she had felt protected in the most basic sense.   
  
Paul, while about the same height as Michael, was smaller in other ways. His shoulders weren't as broad, and his wiriness allowed him to move quickly, spinning her around, out of the kitchen and down the hall, and before she could gasp for new oxygen after their first kiss, she was laid horizontally on her bed. He stripped all her clothes off with such speed and dexterity she felt a little chagrined at having thought him slow moving at all. He’d even managed to remove the rubber band holding her hair up on the back of her head.   
  
She lifted her hands to cover her breasts as he released the front catch of her bra. The exposure happened too quickly, and she couldn't process the moment fast enough to feel comfortable. His fingers wrapped around her wrists, pulling her arms away from her body. "No," he whispered. "Let me see."   
  
Sara swallowed audibly and felt her whole body flush, the blood snaking to the surface of her skin, making her nipples throb just from the touch of his eyes. Reaching up, she unfastened the two top buttons of his Hawaiian shirt, and with his help, tugged it over his head until it flew across the room, out of sight and out of her way. Then, as if reading her mind, he covered her body with his, his mouth caressing hers in a teasing and wholly erotic manner while the soft hair on his chest rasped against her breasts in the way that God, in all his wisdom, must have intended when he designed Paul Kellerman. Sara moaned, the sound crowding up her throat to linger on her tongue and then find its way into his mouth when he stopped the teasing touches and kissed her as though he were already deeply inside her.   
  
She forgot to be self-conscious then, or to protect herself in anyway. She simply wanted, and she followed every whim of her heart. Her hands moved greedily over his back and then down, sliding into the back of his shorts to cup his ass and pull him tight against her. The heat emanating from his skin made her palms prickle, and the sound he uttered as she cupped his buttocks took away any lingering insecurities. His desire for her enabled her own heady lust to flame to the utmost level.   
  
She decided that she wanted to burn bright and all-consuming. She didn't want the slow drift that would bring everything together at some point in the near future. She wanted to burst into mindless fornication, lungs heaving and limbs tingling. She tried to tell him, her hands dragging ferociously at his remaining clothes, her lips gasping his name, and things like, "Now, please, now," and "I need..." and "I want..." but it seemed the more she said, the slower he moved. Even when his lips released hers to slide down to maraud her nipples and then even further south, his tongue was direct but painstakingly thorough. Nothing she communicated made him move faster. Instead, his agenda became apparent because he kissed every inch of her, his fingers moving along her legs as though he was sculpting her from malleable clay, his lips curving up in smiles she couldn't see, but could feel on the inside of her thigh, or below her navel or on the underside of her breast. His tongue danced over her skin until she gripped his hair with two fists, dragging him back up so that their faces were together. Then she pushed him over on to his back and straddled him, stripping him of the khaki shorts and the tighty whities she would tease him about later.   
  
She thought she would just climb up and slide down on him, take what she so badly needed, but the details of his body captured her attention, drawing her focus away from her immediate desire to the fact that she could now make him beg and plead and keen. His chest and shoulders had just enough curvature to them to reveal that he visited a gym fairly regularly, but he wasn't bulked up to a ridiculous size. The smattering of hair over his pectoral muscles was perfect, both in amount and placement, but there was one small patch in the center that seemed irregular. "Burn mark," she murmured, her fingers trailing over his sternum in silent apology, but he seemed unaware of where her mind had gone. "Sara," he gasped, and she couldn't help herself from leaning over him, trailing her hair over his stomach until she had slid down his body and the main event bobbed in front of her face.   
  
"Paybacks are a bitch," she murmured, humming her lips over the head of his cock until he cried out, a sound that made her feel they were somewhat even. Torturing him this way had never occurred to her, would never have occurred to her most likely, but now in the moment, she felt more powerful than at any other time in their shared history.   
  
She wanted this feeling to last, the rush of it reminiscent of something she had put behind her years ago. Flicking him with her tongue, she felt the victor's smile spread over her face as his hips lifted urgently off her down comforter. Then she was ready, ready to put them both out of their miseries, or at least extend the torture so they were both experiencing the same portion of it.   
  
In the moment right before she took him into her body, his hands reached for hers. Their fingers entwined and he worked with her, accepting her possession with the same intensity, making what they both gave equal in some harmonious way. Sara took, but was taken, gave, but received.   
  
They had a meeting of bodies, and minds, and whatever either of them had thought it was, it was more. It was better. It took her by surprise, robbing her of other memories, at least during that white hot flash. She rode him for a long time, but ultimately, he took control, rolling them both over so that she lay beneath him. When she finally came, she cried his name, more aware of whom she cradled inside her than she wanted to be, and then she began sobbing.   
  


*

  
  
Paul had never been much of a ladies' man. For him, sex had been relatively clinical in most cases, or totally unnecessary. The thrill of the hunt, or the success of a covert operation had always been more likely to give him a hard-on than a woman. He'd fancied himself in love with Caroline Reynolds for a long time, too, and he'd told himself he didn't feel sexual desire for anyone else because it was all for her, though she never took him up on his multi-layered devotion.   
  
But in the moments following his pulsing orgasm inside Sara Tancredi-Scofield, he realized he'd never felt anything like this before, because there had never been anyone worthy of this type of surrender. In the aftermath, she cried against his shoulder, her tears hot and plentiful, and their meaning caused his own eyes to sting in sympathy. He felt like crying—sobbing hysterically even—too, but for an entirely different reason. The minute he'd met Sara, he'd wanted a new life, though it had taken him six years to fully understand what kind of different life he could have. The idea of having this—having  _her_ —on a regular basis consumed his mind so strongly, he probably would have been plotting how to make it happen, no holds barred, except that her convulsive weeping forced him to focus on her instead of  _them_.   
  
He found himself murmuring soft things like, "You're okay," and "I'm here," and "Shhhhh," while rocking her gently. He rolled off of her, pulling her with him, and she climbed on top of him, her desperation to disappear inside him obvious in the way she clung to him. It went on for quite a while, and just when he started to think nothing he could do or say would comfort her, she began to calm down. Her breathing slowed, and the tears stopped flowing. Her face rested against his neck, the puffs of her exhalations creating a rhythm on his skin that lulled him into a very relaxed state.   
  
He didn't allow himself to fall asleep though; he waited, wondering if she'd want to talk, but she went to sleep, and he decided that was probably for the best. She'd been through so much, and he suspected a lot of things hadn’t been explored until he’d arrived. He curled his arms securely around her, holding her close, and hoped that when she woke, she wouldn't take him up on his earlier offer to toss him out.   
  
The stress this idea brought made sleep impossible, so he lay quietly, memorizing every nuance of her sated body lying on his, the sound of her breathing, the  _thud, thud_  of her heart beating against his chest. He'd told himself that all the times he'd imagined this very thing, that if it only happened once, he would make it be enough. Of course, theorizing about such things made ridiculous promises like that possible, but now, faced with the impending doom of it all, he had to accept it for what it might become: the single greatest moment of his life. Not just because he'd had sex with a woman he loved, but because he'd been able to be as close to her emotionally as he supposed anyone had in six long years. He'd broken through something that he could only hope would help her in the long run. Whatever it meant for him had to be of very small significance.   
  
He suddenly understood Michael Scofield in a way he’d never wanted to.   
  
He lost track of time, content to lie there until the sun set and came up again, but Sara stirred against him a short while later. Her body stiffened and then relaxed again in a matter of moments and her fingers began combing through his chest hair in soft caresses.   
  
“You okay?” he asked, only because he couldn’t stand the silence knowing she was awake.   
  
Her head moved, and a small whispery sound of “I think so,” accompanied the nod.   
  
He didn’t shift her off of him though he very much wanted to look into her face; instead he counted it good fortune that she stayed in his arms willingly and when she ran her fingernail lightly over his nipple, it caused a reaction throughout his body. “I’m sorry,” he said, trying to focus on the matter at hand, not the physiological reactions he experienced with every breath she took.   
  
“It wasn’t your fault he died,” she said, her voice very quiet. “It’s not your fault that I haven’t really ever thought about moving on. It is your fault that I’m here, now, though. I’m a little torn on what to blame on you, exactly, but for now, I’ll say that I wish that awful shirt had made me find you unattractive.”   
  
Paul pondered that for a moment. “So, I’m guilty of being attractive?” he asked, a grin curving his mouth.   
  
“Mmm-hmmm,” she said, and her lips brushed against his throat.   
  
He could have howled in triumph, because this felt like the exact opposite of throwing him out, but he restrained himself. She moved, pushing herself up so her face was over his and her hair fell around them in a soft, red curtain. Their lips met in gentle kisses that made his chest ache and his groin tighten. It was all new to him, and he almost felt virginal, though he didn’t like the implication of innocence on his part. Novice, maybe, but virtuous, no. Sliding both hands into her hair, he held her head in place so he could slip his tongue into her mouth. “You are so beautiful,” he said when he disengaged a moment later. “Beautiful, and amazing, and you make my blood boil, and I never thought this would really ever happen.”  
  
Sara looked at him seriously then, her expression somber. “I was sort of mad,” she confessed. “But now I’m really glad you came. And I’m really glad you stayed..” Her lashes dropped down over her eyes and then she exhaled which caused a full-body caress that made his heart start pumping harder. “Although I am curious about how you knew about my son, and Michael’s death.” She returned her gaze to his, and waited for a response.   
  
Paul could have spun anything at that point; he could have come up with something that would have made his watching out for her look really protective and sweet as opposed to creepy and stalkerish. But lying now seemed counter-productive. He wanted her to want him to stay for real, not be lulled into a false sense of security, so he tried to keep it simple. “I heard Michael died—it just came up through the channels because he was still on the radar because it had only been a few months since The Company had gone down. There had been some speculation that it had been a hit, but medical records proved that to be untrue. So then, I just wanted to keep an eye on you. Make sure you were okay. So I had someone detailing you every few months.”   
  
She looked speculative, but not repulsed when she asked, “You already knew what killed Michael when you asked me about it earlier?”   
  
He shrugged, his movement jostling them both. “I’m a bastard; we already established that.”   
  
She laughed softly and then dropped her head down so her nose nuzzled into his ear. “It took you six years to come here, Paul. You’re not nearly the bastard I’d like you to be.” She pressed her lips to his earlobe. “Mikey won’t be home until Sunday,” she said, and he’d actually already considered that because he’d listened intently to the little boy’s message on the answering machine.   
  
“I can make sure I’m gone before he gets home,” he offered.   
  
“Linc usually brings him back around 1 in the afternoon.”   
  
Paul grimaced. “Yeah, I’d definitely like to be gone before Burrows shows up.”   
  
Sara lifted her head and smiled knowingly. “That would probably be wise.”   
  
“Speaking of being wise…” he began, a silent flogging starting in his head. “I actually had three condoms in my wallet, but I didn’t use a one of them.”   
  
“I’m on the Pill. Not that that’s any guarantee,” she said; it sounded like an afterthought, but he felt himself get more excited by the random idea.   
  
“Maybe we should use the condoms too, then?” he asked, even though he really just wanted to throw them out altogether.  
  
“That would also be wise,” she said, pressing her lips to his. “At least until we run out…”   
  


*

  
  
Sometime after the third condom was disposed of, they fell asleep for several hours, and when they awoke Saturday had dawned bright and clear. Sara got up to take a shower while Paul offered to make breakfast.   
  
“If you can whip something up from box cereal and milk, more power to you,” she said as she walked into the bathroom.   
  
“You have something against eggs?” he asked.   
  
She paused, looking over her shoulder at him, only to catch him staring at her ass. “No, but I don’t know if I’ve got any eggs. There might be a few.”   
  
“I’ll snoop around,” he said, finally dragging his eyes up to her face.   
  
“You do that,” she said, smiling.   
  
Twenty minutes later, she emerged from the bedroom to hear him singing along with one of her CDs, and cooking up quite a storm. “ _If God is a DJ, and life is a dance floor, Love is a rhythm; you are the music…If God is a_ —“ he cut himself off as he spied her coming across the floor, blushing when their eyes met.   
  
Sara rubbed a towel at the ends of her hair and looked at him with laughing eyes. “You like Pink, huh?”   
  
He looked back to the mushrooms he’d been cutting up as she sidled up to him at the counter next to the stove. “She’s all right,” he said.   
  
Unable to help herself, Sara leaned into him and kissed his mouth—too quickly for him to really respond—and she realized it was latent affection that she hadn’t experienced in a very long time. “You’re a funny guy, Paul Kellerman.”   
  
“Am I?” he asked, scooping the mushrooms up in his hands and tossing them into the frying pan with the eggs.   
  
“Not funny: ha-ha. Well, funny: ha-ha in some ways, I guess, but mostly, funny: you make no sense. Or maybe this makes no sense, us being here together, and I’m trying to pin it all on you.” During her shower she’d avoided thinking too deeply about what had passed between them; instead she’d focused on the visceral, tactile memories, and the fact that he was an excellent lover. It wasn’t just that she had gone without for so long. He’d made her come hard multiple times, and they had been mind-blowing explosions that ricocheted throughout her body. She felt sore, rubbery, and well used in all of her muscle groups this fine morning (well, this fine noon hour), and she couldn’t say she regretted a bit of it.   
  
Moving away from the stove to toss her towel over the back of one of the chairs at the table, Sara pushed the sexual thoughts aside, and went back to the refrigerator to pull out the orange juice. “Or maybe it makes a lot of sense, but you’re not ready to see it that way,” he said.   
  
She looked at him as he continued to move the items cooking on the stovetop around with a spatula. Pulling two glasses from the overhead cupboard, she said, “Maybe.” At this point anything was possible and she didn’t know what to think. “Did you have anything special you wanted to do today?” she asked, pouring juice into both glasses. When she looked up from her chore, he was watching her intently, but he didn’t seem inclined to answer the question. “You come to Mexico frequently?” she asked, though from the heat in his gaze, she thought she knew what tourist attraction he was most interested in.   
  
“Never,” he said, the word brisk and tight.   
  
“Oaxaca City is really beautiful. I could show you around,” she offered. She handed him one of the glasses of OJ.   
  
“I’d rather just stay here,” he said, pausing slightly. “Unless you’d rather go out?”   
  
Sara sipped from her own glass, her eyes meeting his. “No,” she said. “We can stay here.” Feeling like a guilty traitor would not be any easier to bear alone, so her reasons for keeping him there were two-fold. The predominant reason though overcame them both in the extension of the invitation and Paul set his glass of juice and the finished eggs aside so that they could eat them after they saw to a more immediate need.


	4. Chapter 4

Throughout the day, after they'd eaten in an effort to refuel—and after Paul had driven Sara's car up the street to a drugstore for more condoms—they returned to Sara's bed. Sometimes they got up so she could show him pictures of Michael Junior, other times they moved just to change the venue, making love in various spots in Sara’s tiny house.  
  
“Did you purposely buy the smallest house you could find, or what?” Paul asked as they settled back on the bed after a vigorous round that had involved him pinning her to a wall.  
  
Sara’s laughter coasted across his nerve endings, and a shudder of pleasure wracked his body as she rolled up on one elbow to mirror his position next to her. “Well, we don’t need much room, just the two of us, but yes. I want Mikey to be aware of how to live without much. I don’t want him lost in a 19-room mansion feeling like the only person in the house who knows him is the nanny. Being on top of each other, so to speak, has contributed to our bond, I believe.”  
  
He listened to her words, but heard the underlying sentiment in her story. Frank Tancredi, whom he’d only met one time, had been less than bonded to his daughter. Suppressing scandal had always been more important than whatever Sara had been going through, and that was why, once upon a time, Paul had been taken into confidence. Because there had been no one else to fill the void.  
  
Nodding, he rubbed his hand down her bare arm briskly, her smooth skin gliding under his fingers like silk. “That sounds good. But is that the only reason? You’re not here because of financial problems, are you?”  
  
Sara laughed again, much louder than before. She slapped his shoulder good-naturedly. “I’m not poor, Paul. And even if I was, I wouldn’t let you be my sugar daddy.”  
  
He shook his head. “I wasn’t suggesting—“  
  
“Shut up,” she said, pushing against his chest to emphasize her point. “My father was a very wealthy man and he left me a lot of money. If I wanted the Ritz Carlton on the beach, I could have it. I want this. I  _like_  this. This is my home.”  
  
“Okay, okay,” he exclaimed, leaning into her to kiss her laughing mouth.  
  
Things could have escalated from there, but he restrained himself. Paul had never had this experience before—the one where he couldn't get enough—and it felt a little like galloping frantically away from the panic that nipped at his heels as to the depth and breadth of his need for her while also gorging himself on her flesh. He didn't want to think about it too much, so he asked her questions to distract himself, and reveled when she asked him things that also kept his mind far from what he would feel when he had to leave.   
  
Sometime later the conversation traveled to how he hadn't enjoyed being a politician as much as he'd thought he would. "I guess I'm just more of a behind-the-scenes kinda guy," he murmured, his fingers drawing lazy circles on her bare hip.   
  
"I can see that," she said, her own caresses wandering dangerously low on his abdomen. She rubbed her knuckles idly below his navel and he tried to appear unaffected, because good God, how many times could he possibly get it up for her, anyway? The entire weekend had begun to feel like one of those stories he’d heard guys tell about their leave time when he was in the Army that he had never believed.   
  
He focused on his bitter tale. "And no matter how much of a hero you are, people always remember the bad things you did, so I had to constantly hear my name in conjunction with the Reynolds scandal even while they praised my part in bringing down The Company. It's like they'd slap my face just so they could kiss my ass. I got tired of it."   
  
"What are you going to do now?" she asked.   
  
"I have no idea," he replied, which made him realize that's why he'd come here. He was at loose ends, so maybe coming here to try to tie this one up had only backfired on him, because he didn't feel like anything had ended. Now there were just more loose ends.   
  
"Some of the articles I read about you cited your Chief of Staff as Kristine Kellerman. I thought maybe you'd gotten married." He tried not to react too strongly to this very revealing statement.   
  
"Little sister," he said by way of explanation.   
  
"You have a sister?"   
  
He couldn't help his smirk. "Yes... Even  _I_  have a family. I didn't just spawn from an evil empire. Well. My mother was her own kind of evil, so perhaps that's an apt description."   
  
Sara laughed again, and he wondered at the frequency. Did he cause it, or was she just like this all the time? It was something he had gotten used to far too quickly over the course of 24 hours. He loved it when anything he said got some sort of reaction out of her like that. The light that shone from her face seemed angelic to him. "Your son will never be able to make such a statement," he found himself saying, and then he felt his face flushing in embarrassment over his sentimentality.   
  
Sara's expression softened while her fingers whisked up his torso to cup his jaw in her palm. "From your lips to God's ears," she said, leaning in to kiss him.   
  
Paul slid his hand down over her lower back and tugged her body into his so they were pressed together. "What's he like?" he asked. She'd shown him pictures of Mikey on various birthdays or outings to the beach with Lincoln, Sofia, LJ, and their twin daughters, but she hadn't spoken about him too much.   
  
"Oh, he's wonderful. He's a sweet, sweet boy. Lincoln says he has the same temperament as his father, though I guess Michael—big Michael—could be quite a snotty know-it-all and little Michael doesn't have a bit of that. He's overly kind, and has always been that way. Always shares with kids at daycare, always tells me he loves me, or how pretty he thinks I am. And he's beyond reality when he interacts with Linc and Sofia's girls. Sometimes I think him being nearly perfect was the universe's way of trying to make up for his father being taken too soon."   
  
He was thoughtful as he constructed his next sentence. “What’s the hardest part about Michael being gone?” he asked.  
  
Her eyes dropped from his, her gaze sliding up and focusing on some point on the wall above his head. He waited as she took a couple of calming breaths, and then a pained smile flashed over her face. “It’s not just one thing,” she finally said. “It’s more like lots of little things, things you can’t even imagine until you’re faced with them.” She shrugged. “It’s everything.”  
  
“Give me an example,” Paul said. He wasn’t sure what he was trying to accomplish by this line of questioning, but now that he had started it, it seemed imperative.  
  
She waited a moment, obviously thinking. “Oh, I know. When Mikey was two, I started potty training him. He was a quick learner, and soon—within a few weeks really, he hadn’t had any accidents. It was one of the weekends where he was supposed to go to Linc’s—we try to do it at least once a month. When Lincoln brought him home, he mentioned that Mikey sat on the toilet to pee. I was like, ‘so?’ and Lincoln was like, ‘He’s a boy, Sara.’ Now, there are plenty of books out there that say that learning to do it sitting down isn’t a big deal, I know because I’ve read them, but it was just that. You know, it would never have occurred to me. It’s a boy thing. It’s a  _dad_  thing. So that made me think, in a fast-forward sort of way about when he gets older. And girls. And you know…all that stuff. I cried every time I thought about it for days, not because it matters if he sits or stands to urinate, but because Michael wasn’t here to show him how to do it.”  
  
The hand Paul still had resting on her lower back had started moving slowly up and down in a soothing rhythm as she spoke. “But Lincoln will be around for all the growing up boy stuff,” he said in an effort to encourage her. “You seem very close to him.”  
  
“Well, yes. Lincoln is my brother now, in every sense of the word, and he takes his responsibility to Mikey very seriously. It’s definitely better than nothing.” She brought her eyes back to his and this time her smile looked more natural. “And Linc is great. Don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t even criticizing me about the peeing thing, he was telling me in his awkward way how to be better. But the point was, I didn’t even think of it. There are certain things I’ll never think of, just because I’m not a man.”  
  
Paul nodded, waiting to see if she responded well to his next move before saying anything. Where their bodies had already come to rest against each other, he relaxed into her so that she began to bear his weight and they slowly rotated until she lay on her back and he rested on his arm over her prone body. “You can’t beat yourself up about that type of stuff,” he said, brushing her lips gently with his.  
  
“Mother’s guilt is the worst,” she mumbled under his lips.   
  
Allowing a little bit of space to develop between their faces, he cupped her cheek in his palm and rubbed his thumb over her jawline. “I could tell just by setting foot in this house that you are a good mother.”  
  
Her cheeks flushed, and he wasn’t sure if it was the compliment or the heat growing between their bodies. His only consolation in his own insatiability was the seemingly matched hunger within Sara. She lifted up against him and opened her legs slightly so their bodies brushed intimately. “You don’t have to flatter me, you know,” she said, arching purposely as he got harder and bigger.  
  
“It’s the truth,” he said, his breathing getting harder to control. He moved across her, reaching for a condom on the bedside table. The action caused his chest to rub across hers, and she arched again, moaning softly as his penis breached her opening and she shifted suddenly and then he was there, pushing inside her while clutching an unopened packet in his hand.  
  
Their eyes met, and the challenge in her gaze made him realize she was doing it on purpose. Distracting him, mesmerizing him, bending him to her will, he desperately tried to hold on to the thoughts in his mind, but at this moment, as he'd experienced several times over the last 24 hours, the only thing he could think of was how much he wanted her, not just for the next few minutes until orgasm overcame them both, but forever. He cursed under his breath and then held the unused condom up so she could see it. “We should—“ he began, but then she thrust her hips up and he was deeply inside her, and like the first time they’d done it, the sensation electrified him. Sex in anyway, shape, or form with Sara was immensely satisfying, but with no latex between them, just the sweet, tight, wet fit of her around him, made him wish for death so that he never had to experience anything like an ending of this fantastic moment.  
  
He closed his eyes, trying to cool his blood enough not to lose it completely. Sara matched him in every way, and she was undoubtedly the only woman he would ever be with for the rest of his life. This was it for him, and the idea had a paralyzing affect. He wanted it, but he didn't. He didn't understand it entirely so it frightened him. And he had no idea what, if anything, she wanted in return.   
  
This moment, while she battled to dominate him, seemed erroneous compared with all their other couplings, and the conflicting thoughts and feelings rushing through him made everything more urgent. He dropped his head down, capturing her lips in a fierce kiss. He kissed her until he felt her hand wrap around his and pluck the condom from his fingers. She flung it away and moved under him again, since he still hadn’t started thrusting himself.   
  
As she moaned, their lips slipped apart, and her panting gasps made his temperature soar dangerously high. "I think there's something wrong with me," he gritted out, his hand reaching to grab her hip to keep her from moving. He held her so tightly he knew he would leave marks.   
  
She quivered, and a thin, throaty cry erupted from her lips. "I don't," she breathed.  
  
When he didn’t allow her to move her hips, he felt her inner muscles clenching and he muttered something that sounded like, “Goddamn you,” though he didn’t mean it in the way it was traditionally used. He forced himself not to move and then expounded by saying, “There's definitely something wrong with me, because I  _can't_. Get. Enough.”   
  
Sara's arms wound around his neck, pulling him into her even though he was trying to keep distance between them. “That's how it's supposed to be,” she whispered.  
  
It was either the power of that truth or being pushed beyond his endurance level that made him finally start moving. He groaned her name as her legs slithered up around his hips, and within minutes they were both there, panting and gasping, sweating as they burst into shared bliss.  
  
Paul dropped his head down on to her shoulder, physically unable to move away from her. Emotionally, he knew he would never be separated from her, because it wouldn’t matter if he never saw her again, he would never stop thinking of her. Of this. Of what it had been like to be with her, even for just a short while.  
  
He must have drifted off for a few minutes because his next moment of awareness was Sara pushing him off of her and then her settling into his side, her leg draped over his thigh and her head on his shoulder. He patted her bottom gently and wrapped both arms around her, squeezing her against him.  
  
“So, you never come to Mexico, huh?” she asked, and he shook himself fully awake when he realized she wanted to talk.  
  
It took a moment for his brain to register what she meant. “Well, never before.” He opened his mouth to say something else, a witty vacationer type remark, but before he could come up with something, she said, “If you get out this way again…I wouldn’t mind it if you stopped by.”  
  
Paul hesitated, but then reached for her hand, lacing their fingers together. “Even when Mikey’s here?” he asked.  
  
She tensed up against him, and then she shook her head. “No, you’re probably right about that. But, if you called ahead, and it was a weekend he was at Linc’s…”  
  
“Right,” he said, trying not to let the balloon of disappointment in his chest rob him of air. “It would be hard for him, probably.”  
  
She lifted her head from his shoulder to look at him. “It would be harder for him if you came around for a while, and then you stopped. I’d rather wait to introduce you until we’re a little more…”  
  
She didn’t finish her thought, but Paul didn’t need her to. He cupped her head in his hand and pulled her face to his. The only reason he wouldn’t come back was if she asked him not to. The thought that she didn’t want her son to get attached to him, not because of all the terrible things he’d done, or who he’d been in the canvas of her past life, but because it might be too hard for him to say goodbye at some point gave him more hope than he’d ever enjoyed in his entire life. He kissed her lips with love brimming in his throat, but for all that she drove him out of mind and made him lose control of everything else, he didn’t say what was in his heart.  
  
He had a feeling she knew anyway, but that was his, and he would keep it until—if ever—it felt right to give to her.


	5. Chapter 5

_11 months later..._    
  
Sara awoke abruptly, and then lay very still trying to determine what had woken her. She decided after a moment it was the absolute silence in the house, so she rolled over and looked at her alarm clock. It wasn't even 7am yet.   
  
Rolling back over, she punched Paul's pillow and wished, not for the first time in the last 24 hours, that he were there, where he belonged. Normally, this was the weekend he made it down—always when Mikey went to Linc and Sofia's, he was there, and over the last couple of months he'd even managed to make it down during the middle of the week so he would be there for a couple of days before she took Mikey out to Lincoln's beachside place. But he was always there when her son was not, and she had grown accustomed to that.   
  
She'd grown accustomed to  _him_.   
  
And she missed him all the time he was gone, not just when he wasn't there and her son happened to be absent as well.   
  
The first time he'd suggested that he come early to meet Michael, she'd been as nervous as she had been excited. She needn't have worried a bit because her son loved him, as he loved everyone, and Paul had made a special effort to be interested in everything Mikey said, and they had even played on the X-Box for Michael's one-hour-a-day allotment. Paul hardly knew what an X-Box was, so Michael had easily beaten him, which made him like Paul even more just for pity's sake. At one point she'd watched her 6-1/2 year old son throw a game she knew he'd beaten 10 times over just to make the adult in the room feel better about himself.   
  
Boy, did she love her little man.   
  
And as much as it pained her to admit, she loved her big man too. It worried her, not because she regretted falling in love again, but because she knew at some point they would have to make some sort of permanent arrangement and Lincoln would have to know. They couldn't keep playing weekend lovers. It had become increasingly difficult to be apart, and now when they did have time together, the voraciousness of their couplings had nothing to do with it being new; instead it was like they were trying to store up like chipmunks until the hibernation period would end and they'd be back to eating like normal mammals.   
  
This process usually left her exhausted on Monday mornings after his weekend visits, and then she would spend the entire week making pro and con lists in her head about why she should ask him to stay, permanently.   
  
The biggest con was Lincoln Burrows, and that wasn't because he'd once been incarcerated for an infamous crime. Lincoln was literally the biggest con; he was also the tallest, beefiest, meanest, kick-your-ass capable, and most likely to pass judgment upon her that she could not live with, and these things scared her like nothing before in her life. Often, when she thought upon it too much, she felt as if she were flashing back to her high school years when trying to gain her father's approval was something she still thought she could achieve.   
  
She had been through survivor’s guilt, and widow’s guilt, and mother’s guilt, and there had been a moment when it all dissipated, and she embraced that living her life and being happy did not mean cutting herself off from the pleasures other people enjoyed, whether it be sex or companionship, and especially love. The mad love of romance, the type that burned her up and filled her with optimism and made her whisk her fingers gently over his eyelashes as he lay in bed next to her because they were so fluffy and attractive, and of all the things she loved about him, that was what she loved most. At least when she categorized his attractive features. She also loved his intelligence, and the in depth conversations they had about politics and religion, and all the other things you weren’t supposed to be able to talk about with people calmly.   
  
They never fought. Not to say that they didn’t disagree, but Paul had the ability to defuse any situation, and he did with her all the time. He just didn’t like to fight, so he wouldn’t. Sara learned, after months of his use of the same evading tactics that allowed them to patiently discuss, and usually come to some sort of compromise, that she liked it too. She liked the serenity that had come into her life. Which was its own kind of irony when she thought of meeting him at an AA meeting so long ago.   
  
She'd prepared several speeches to explain her position to Lincoln, and most of those speeches included a paragraph about how it really wasn't any of his business who she slept with, or chose to build a life with, and how Michael had been dead for seven years, and she'd lived like a nun long enough. Ultimately all these speeches were tossed out because she knew Lincoln didn't begrudge her any of that, and he would most likely agree with her on all points. He was really a very reasonable person.   
  
But when she got to the part about Paul Kellerman being  _the guy_ , everything else sort of evaporated. Her arguments, her explanations, her courage. The end of the line included someone they had once purposely ditched because, well, he'd tried to kill them both. He'd been a turncoat. He'd been the one who put Lincoln on death row to begin with, though it had neither been his brainchild nor his fault that it didn't happen. Lincoln had been a means to an end for Paul, but it was only Sara's freedom that had garnered her brother-in-law's. Paul had been responsible for Lincoln's exoneration, but it had come too late to make much difference in what the brothers had had to endure, and accomplish to take their lives back. In Sara's estimation, it didn't carry much weight, and so she figured it wouldn’t carry any weight with Lincoln.   
  
She punched Paul's pillow—the one he slept on when he was there, and the one she cuddled with when he was not—as if those mediocre blows might produce some train of thought she had not yet ridden.   
  
She drifted back to sleep somewhere in the middle of that, because it was Sunday and her son would not be home until the early afternoon, and she had nothing else planned. Sleeping in had been her on her schedule, and one way or another, she would get her Paul fix. Dreaming about him seemed her best bet.   
  


*

  
  
Sara heard Lincoln's truck pull up outside, and she went out to meet him and Mikey as they climbed out. Her son ran to her with enthusiasm, wrapping his arms around her neck as she bent to him. She lifted him up, and as she did so she realized he was getting too big for this sort of thing. Her baby wasn't a baby anymore and trying to hold him, with his gangly arms around her throat and his equally long legs snaking at her waist, would not be feasible for much longer. She patted his back and said, "Hi, honey."   
  
"Mom, mom!" he said, brimming with excitement. "Guess what? Uncle Linc gave me my very own surf board! Him and LJ are gonna teach me how! Isn't that awesome!?"  
  
Sara lifted her gaze to her brother-in-law's as he came around his truck and started across their small yard to greet her on the porch steps. "That's great," she replied. "Although, maybe Mom should have known about it ahead of time?"  
  
Lincoln's eyebrows lifted in practiced innocence. "Easier to ask forgiveness than permission," he said, fighting a smile.  
  
Sara set her son down and his serious, colorful eyes fastened on her face. "It's okay, isn't it, Mom? I promise to be very careful! And right now, I can't even stand up on it, so I'm not very good. And if I only get to practice once a month, I probably won't get very good very fast. But if you think--"  
  
Sara cut him off, because the brilliant mind of her husband had definitely transfered to her son's DNA, and they might be there all day as he explained the logistics of picking up a new hobby. "No, Mikey, as long as you're careful, and listen to everything Uncle Linc and LJ say, I'm sure it will be fine. And I bet you'll pick it up faster than you think."  
  
She brushed her hand over his cheek, watching his beautiful face as he smiled. Every day that he aged, he looked more and more like his father, so much so that if Sara didn't remember the 12 hours of labor she'd gone through, she wouldn't even know that she was his mother. He whirled around to look at Lincoln, who had moved closer to them, but still hung back a little, perhaps afraid Sara might smack him. "See, Uncle Linc? I told you she'd be cool about it!"  
  
Michael grabbed his duffle bag out of Lincoln's hand and went into the house. Sara knew he'd be a few minutes, because he liked to unpack as soon as he arrived home. As she weighed the options of lecturing Lincoln on child safety, he stepped closer to her and wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tightly.  
  
Caught off guard, though they were affectionate often, Sara's hands clutched at his shoulders and she laughed nervously. "What's that for?" she asked as he let her go.  
  
"For being you," he said, his voice rough like he was choking on some sort of emotion.  
  
She watched him suspiciously. "What's up with you?" she asked, feeling a weight settle on her chest. She hoped nothing was wrong with Sofia, or the girls.  
  
Lincoln hesitated, and she wasn't sure if it was because he couldn't decide what to say, or if he was still getting control of his emotions. "Mikey said you have a boyfriend," he finally said.  
  
Sara froze, not exactly surprised, but still totally unprepared. She hadn't sworn her son to secrecy, because she figured if she didn't make a big deal about it, he might not even think to mention it to the rest of their family. She had called Paul her friend, not her boyfriend purposely, because being seven and being in the second grade, Michael was very familiar with the pairing off of boys and girls already, though he still viewed it as grosteque when his female classmates tried to kiss him on the cheek. That sort of behavior was only okay from his mother, his auntie and his little cousins, as far as he was concerned.  
  
"He did, did he?" she asked, trying to buy more time. She wasn't ready to have this conversation yet. She hadn't even given Paul any warning that she would be telling Lincoln.  
  
"Yeah, Sare," Lincoln said with a thread of sarcasm in his tone. "He said a nice man had come to visit you a couple of times, and that he really likes him--and that he sucks on the X-Box apparently. And he said, he thinks  _you_  really like him." Lincoln paused again, watching her face intently. "And I just wanted to make sure that you weren't keeping it a secret from me, for any reason. I hope you know I want you to be happy, and if you've met someone...I think that's great. And I think Mike would--no, I  _know_ , Mike would be glad too. He wouldn't want you to be alone."  
  
Sara couldn't help the tears that pricked her eyes and she shifted away, turning back to the front door and pulling it shut so that Michael couldn't overhear the conversation. She sniffed, and ran her fingers under her eyes. "Thank you, Lincoln. I do know that, but I still appreciate you saying it." When she turned back to face him, his expression was so tender it made more tears well in her eyes. She loved Lincoln as fiercely as any sister could love their brother, and she knew he loved her too, but it wasn't like they sat around talking about those feelings often. Combining the power of those emotions with thoughts of her dead husband was a surefire way to start a crying jag, and she desperately did not want that to happen. She reached out to him, and was immediately engulfed in his bear-like embrace again. He held her tightly and they both shed tears, and Sara wished this was where it could end. She wished she could just kiss his cheek and then promise to bring her boyfriend up in a couple of weeks for dinner so they could all meet him, but she knew she couldn't do that. If they were having this moment, it was time to tell him everything, even though it might create a rift so vast everything would change between them forever.  
  
She got control of herself and slowly eased back from him. She resisted the urge to pat his cheek like he too were a small boy. She knew that what she was about to say would bring out the portion of Lincoln that didn't emerge often but had garnered him the nickname in prison of  _Linc the Sink_. Folding her arms over her chest protectively, she gestured at the front step and sat down, waiting for him to join her.  
  
He did and one of his big hands spread out over her back, rubbing briskly. "I'm glad you've found someone, Sare. You've been alone a long time."  
  
Sara leaned forward on her legs, the step beneath her bottom only slightly above one under her feet, giving her the ability to sink in on herself. She didn't want him touching her while she told him, and he seemed to pick up on that, because he removed his hand from her back and then his arms rested loosely between his spread knees as he sat next to her. "I have to tell you something," she said, unable to help the grave tone out of her voice. "So I'm just going to say it, and get it over with, okay?"  
  
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and he nodded.  
  
"About a year ago, I had a visitor. Someone from, you know, the days of The Company, and Scylla. He came just to check on me, and Mikey. It was sort of odd, but as I talked to him, I found out that he really just wanted to make sure we were okay. He had a lot of guilt from everything that happened, as you can imagine."  
  
Lincoln made a sound of agreement, but continued to listen patiently.  
  
"He was someone I knew, you know. I mean, he wasn't a stranger. And I think maybe there was a certain level of comfort there, because I knew him. But I didn't know him, either. I don't know if this makes any sense to anyone except me, well, and probably him, but that's how I felt at the time. I felt comfortable with him. I needed that, I think, to make that step forward, to realize that it was okay to want, and need, and even love again." She stopped talking when tears started to clog her throat. She looked at Lincoln again, whose blue eyes were trained on her face and his look of compassion just seemed to pluck more strongly at the emotions coursing through her. She glanced away as she confessed, "And I wanted him. I wanted him, and so I let things happen between us. But only when Michael wasn't here. But after a while, it changed. I think I knew from the beginning it could be the real thing, but I kept my opt-out clause front and center by never letting him meet Michael. But things progressed, and I came to know I didn't want to opt-out. And then he suggested he meet Michael, and as Mikey told you, they got on great. And so I started to feel more certain."  
  
She took a deep breath. "There's only one thing holding me back, now, Linc. And it's this right here. Telling you this is so hard, I--well, I can't even look at you. Even though you're the most supportive, good friend and brother-in-law a girl could ask for, I don't know if I can ask this of you. But at the same time, I don't know if I can  _not_  be with him, now that I've let him into my life so fully."  
  
She needed to say his name still, which had been the whole point of her speech, but she just couldn't make herself do it.  
  
"You really love him, don't you?" Lincoln asked.  
  
She still didn't look at him, but she nodded her head vigorously. "I do, I love him with my whole heart. I love him because of how I loved Michael, and how brief that was, but how intense and wonderful, and  _real_  it was. This is similar. There are differences, because no two people are the same, but I know it's made to last because I still love your brother even though I haven't been with him in seven years. I'll still love Paul in seven years, even if I never see him again."  
  
As soon as his name popped out, she covered her mouth with a hand, and the tears started again. She hadn't meant to say it, not like that.  
  
She felt the air change around them, but she still couldn't bear to look at Lincoln. Then his arm encircled her and her head was on his chest and he rocked her like she was a child. "You do know how smart your kid is, don't you? He told me it was Paul Kellerman. I pretty much figured you didn't enter into anything lightly. Now I know for sure. Shhhhh," he whispered into the top of her head. "Nothing can change how I feel about you, babe. You're my brother's wife, and my nephew's mother. You can't do anything to get rid of me, you got it?"  
  
Sara's sobbing got harder before it got lighter, only because her amazement at his reaction caught her by surprise, even more so than his initiating of this conversation. "You don't think it's insanity that I've fallen in love with the man who framed you for murder?" she asked, lifting her head to look into his face while she swiped at the tears on her face with the sleeves of her t-shirt.  
  
"Hey, it happens," he quipped, a big grin lighting up his expression. Sara started laughing, only because running the gamut of emotion in such a short amount of time left her no other option.  
  
Mikey came out on to the porch a moment later to find his mother and his uncle laughing hysterically and hugging and kissing one another in a very public display of affection. "Hey," he said, a puzzled frown wrinking his brow. "Is Uncle Linc your boyfriend now?"  
  
Sara just laughed harder, but then grabbed her son around the waist and dragged him into her lap. "No, silly boy," she said, transferring her kisses to his sweet cheeks. "Uncle Linc is Auntie Sofia's boyfriend, Paul is my boyfriend, remember? You're not much of a secret keeper, Mikey."  
  
Michael's eyes widened and he looked at his uncle and then back at his mother worriedly. "It was a secret?" he asked, clearly horrified that he'd blown it.  
  
Sara hugged her son tightly. "No," she said, with no regret. "It's not a secret." And she couldn't wait to call Paul and tell him.  



	6. Epilogue: Poker Face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always wanted more from Paul's POV on this one, so there ended up being an epilogue. Title lifted from Lady Gaga's song of the same name.

She often met him at the door in nothing but the orange shirt he'd worn the first day he re-entered her life. It was her private joke, one she found immensely funny, but for Paul, it worked like a match to dynamite. There had been several encounters where the only thing that had been moved was the zipper on his pants, and he would somehow be deep inside her while she trembled against him still fully covered by the enormous shirt.  
  
He'd come several times, as a matter of fact, with orange echoing behind his closed eyes, and Sara's soft laughter tracing the edges of his ears.  
  
It was a  _fugly_  shirt—a term he'd learned watching some silly teenager movie with Sara. (She had a weakness for high school flicks. He guessed it was because she hadn't had a normal high school experience herself and she thought these movies might clue her in a bit. But he had never asked her, and so maybe she just liked high school movies for no deep psychological reason.) But he did love her in the shirt, even if it was hideous. Most especially, he loved taking it off of her after it was damp with sweat, and then he would run his fingers over her glistening skin, idling over his favorite spots, like her nipples, and her navel, and the insides of her thighs. She would lie still for him, letting him explore and dally, and eventually their eyes would meet and they would kiss for a long time. Then Paul would feel tears pricking his eyes, so he would quickly re-engage in the sexual aspect between them because that didn't make him feel like crying.  
  
The tenderness of the aftermath always got him though, and he struggled against showing too much when each return invitation seemed like one more bonus round before she failed to ask him about his next trip.  
  
He hadn't been able to make his regular fourth-weekend trip this time because his sister—on a campaign to make the world as green as possible, and giving Al Gore a run for his money—had needed him to help her with security detail on a public appearance in San Antonio. He free-lanced this type of job all the time now, but he couldn't turn down his sister, even though Kristine would have been more likely to understand the excuse of  _this is my weekend with Sara_  far more than any other client would. He'd cancelled on Sara, who had sounded appropriately disappointed, and then he'd ended the call without saying  _I love you_ , the phrase that hung unsaid between them every time they spoke to each other, and certainly every time they were parting ways.  
  
He had said it once—accidentally—at the height of passion. The only thing that had been okay about that was that Sara's response had been instantaneous. Physically, she had seized up around him, her orgasm taking them both by surprise, and wringing them out so that it took several minutes to get their respective breaths back. She hadn't said anything, but he hadn't needed her to; her response had been plain enough as far as he was concerned. It became clear over the next few weeks that he didn’t doubt her feelings for him at all, he simply doubted her commitment to having him be in her life permanently.  
  
And could he really blame her? It would be awkward, to say the least. As unlikely as it seemed that she might love him, it was much more unlikely that she would ask him for, or give him, a full commitment. Even though the last two times he’d gone to visit, she’d actually let him come while Michael was there, and it had been wonderful, he still saw the doubt in her eyes when she didn’t mean to show him anything.  
  
So he didn’t show her anything either, because it was ludicrous to think they would ever be together forever anyway.  
  
But, he had found that he really did want the words from her, and she had not been forthcoming even with that, so he'd refrained from saying it in a more lucid moment. He also found himself holding back at times in their lovemaking because he was afraid of another unrehearsed admission. Maybe that was why he'd been keen to take Kristine's detailing job and not rush down to see Sara this weekend.  
  
Perhaps he had finally gotten to the point where he didn't need her so much. Now, possibly, he could be as casually invested in the relationship as she was—and so when it inevitably ended, he wouldn't be crippled for life.  
  
_Yeah, right_.  
  
Kristine caught his eye from the front of the auditorium where she sat, preparing to give her “Live Green Forever” speech. The Dean of the University of Texas at San Antonio gave a list of Kristine's credentials to the crowd, including how she had worked on Illinois Congressman Kellerman's campaign several years before, helping to get him elected. Paul smiled at her and nodded, then stood up and walked the perimeter of the folding auditorium chairs. Easing himself slowly towards the stairwell, he intended to go up and make a sweep through the balcony and then position himself so he could see the people who were waiting just backstage.  
  
There was no real danger in a situation like this, but there had been incidents where groups who believed global warming was nothing more than a conspiracy had sometimes demonstrated their protestations of such campaigns like Kristine's. And this was Texas. Anything could happen.  
  
And, as Kristine said when she asked Paul to do this, she always felt safer when her big brother was there.  
  
His phone vibrated against his belt, and as he walked up the stairs to the second level, he flipped it open, revealing the international number on the small screen. He answered the call, pushing his earpiece tighter against the side of his head even though it had been resting there all morning, giving him no difficulties in hearing anyone who called to let him know the situation outside the auditorium.  
  
These were the moments when he knew his poker face with Sara Tancredi probably didn't work at all. The only way to be close to her right now was to press the wireless ear piece into his ear canal, and so that's what he did.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Hey," she said, her customary greeting.  
  
"Hey," he returned. He got to the top of stairs and looked around. There was no one in the balcony area, all those who had come for the speech fit into the floor seats. He walked briskly to the right side so that he could see Kristine and the people mulling around just past the curtains six feet behind the podium.  
  
"Are you working?" she asked.  
  
Sitting down on one of the folding chairs, he nodded for no one to see. "Yes. Kris is about to give her speech."  
  
"Should I call back later?" she asked, and he could hear something, some underlying tone of excitement or anticipation. "I don't want to distract you."  
  
He held onto the snort that bubbled up in his nose. The only way she wouldn't be distracting to him was if he were dead. "It's okay. It's very low key. Everything's cool." He kept his voice pitched quietly, just because the acoustics in the auditorium might carry his conversation much further than he wanted it to go.  
  
"I miss you," she said, surprising him. Sara was affectionate, and there was never any doubt for him that she enjoyed their time together, but after nearly a year, she’d never said things like this. These were the sort of phrases that preceded important conversations about how they were going to not live on separate ends of a continent so that they didn't miss each other; and they were never going to have that conversation, so things like that were never said.  
  
He must have paused too long, because discomfort distinctly sounded in her tone when she continued on. "I think this is a bad time," she said. "You're working. I'll call back later."  
  
"No, no," he found himself babbling. "No, this is fine... It's fine. I'm not busy, really."  
  
She was silent a moment, and then he heard her take a deep breath. "Well, I'm calling to tell you that Lincoln knows about us. And he's fine with it. So, I thought you should know. I thought you'd like to know."  
  
If her profession of missing him had thrown him for a loop, this announcement, said in a rush of breath almost too quickly for him to totally comprehend, seemed like a blow to the gut. Like the ones he'd imagined Michael Scofield's brother would deliver to his stomach if ever he'd known that Paul slept with Sara on a regular basis. "Us?" was the only word he pulled from her monologue.  
  
"Yeah, you and I, you know how we have a thing going on? A relationship?"  
  
Clearing his throat, Paul murmured, "Uh-huh," into the atmosphere.  
  
"Mikey sort of spilled the beans about it, but Lincoln was terribly understanding. He said if I love you and I want to be with you, he supports me."  
  
Paul felt his stomach clench, and he had sudden gratitude for the fact that he was already sitting down because he doubted his legs would hold him upright. He looked up at the high ceiling and the beams that were specially designed to allow the words of whomever spoke from the stage to bounce back to the masses easily. He found them terribly fascinating, just like Lincoln had been terribly understanding.  
  
"Paul?"  
  
He felt like hyperventilating. He wanted to lie flat on the ground, or put his head between his knees or something, but all he did do was stare up at the wood beams of the auditorium. He couldn't respond, he could hardly even settle on one thought.  
  
"Paul?" she said again. "Are you there?"  
  
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Yeah, I’m here.” Dragging his eyes back to the floor, he watched Kristine speak animatedly, her arms gesturing emphatically. Standing up, he walked back to the stairwell, jogging down to the platform that led to the switchback to the ground floor. “I’m just…”  
  
“Surprised?” Sara asked with a laugh. “Yeah, me, too. I mean, I was hysterical with laughter, that’s how surprised I was. I can’t explain it, exactly. But it’s exhilarating. I’m so happy, and I just wanted to tell you.”  
  
Again, he didn't respond right away. Everything he thought he would never get seemed to have spilled over his head in the space of about two minutes, and he found he needed a lot more time than that to process it.  
  
"Paul?" she questioned again as the silence dragged on.  
  
"I'm sorry," he blathered, and then he just hung up.  
  
Pulling the earpiece away from his head, he ripped the cell phone off his belt and shut it off quickly so that if she called back, he wouldn't know.  
  


*

  
  
After two hours in the car to get to Acapulco and eight hours on a plane, Sara Tancredi rented a car at the airport and drove into downtown San Antonio. She hardly knew where she was going, the insufficient instructions of the drawling kid at the rental counter who had seemed to be hitting on her though she had to be old enough to be his mother had not quite sunk into her brain, so she just pulled her car over and pushed the number three on her cell phone.  
  
"Sara? Where are you?" Kristine's voice held a tinge of worry, but also barely contained excitement that made Sara's hands shake more than they already were.  
  
"I'm on Durango, but I'm not sure how far away from the hotel I am."  
  
"Just keep coming, you can't miss it. The Hilton is huge and takes up a full city block."  
  
Pushing out a harried sigh, Sara didn't merge back into traffic. Instead, she asked, "He's still here?"  
  
"Oh, yeah, he's here. I have two more appearances this week, so we weren't leaving for Austin until tomorrow. He's basically locked himself in his hotel room until we go. He has no idea you're coming, not because I didn't try to warn him, but because he's insisted that I leave him alone until our next travel date."  
  
Rubbing her forehead, Sara felt as though she had suddenly encountered a stranger, one that up until she realized he was a stranger, she had wanted to build a life with. Now, she just wanted to make sure he was still alive so she could beat the shit out of him. "Kris, is this normal for him? I've gotta say, I'm a little disconcerted by the whole thing."  
  
There was a slight pause on the other end of the phone. "Oh, Sara. Who can say what's normal for a man who never did a normal thing in his life? All I know is he's madly in love with you, and if he's running from you at this point it's only because he doesn't really know what to do here. He usually likes to work with a plan, you know?"  
  
Sara nodded to no one in particular and ground her teeth. Why was she always attracted to this sort of man? If she could just have had a thing for guys like Lincoln, her life would have been infinitely simpler. "Okay, I'm going in, I guess. But no guarantees. He may need you to pick up the pieces, because if he gives me the runaround, this will be it here, tonight. I've got a child to think about and I can't deal with his dramatics."  
  
She couldn't even believe she'd had to say that. Paul was the last person on earth she'd ever thought who would flake out on her.  
  
"Call me when you can—good or bad news."  
  
"Kristine?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"We'll still be friends, no matter what?"  
  
"Of course. Even if my brother is a total moron, I'm not."  
  
Sara laughed, and it eased some of the pressure in her chest. "Thanks."  
  
"Call me when you can."  
  
"Will do."  
  
Sara ended the call and then shifted the car into drive.   
  
As she headed up the street a few blocks, the tall building she was looking for came into view. She blinked as tears stung her eyes. She didn't know what was about to happen, but she hoped it went her way.  
  


*

  
  
Paul Kellerman lay on the bed in his nice hotel room, fully clothed. He was neither drunk, nor high, something he'd thought might alleviate some of his distress several times over the last fourteen hours. He'd been unable to find illegal substances, and the legal ones in the mini-bar had looked at him accusingly when he set them on the bedside cabinet.   
  
He might never be able to get drunk ever again because of his relationship with Sara. It was just another thing to find annoying about her. Because that's what he'd been doing for the last 14 hours--listing all the things he couldn't handle about her.  
  
So far he'd come up with the fact that her being a recovering drug addict made him feel guilty when he wanted a drink.  
  
Yeah, it wasn't his best stuff, not by a long shot.  
  
He was simply running scared, and he had no protocol for that. He didn't know how to do it, how to be helpless. But he'd been helpless since the moment she'd invited him into her house almost a year before; helpless, and at her mercy, and her cavalier delivery of the fact that she loved him somehow made him even more helpless. Helpless and responseless. He'd hung up on her, when they hadn't even had an argument, and he'd avoided all the phone calls she'd placed to him—the ones on his cell, and the direct ones to the hotel, which made him wonder how the hell she knew where he was when it came to hotels. San Antonio was a large city, so he knew she hadn't just lucked into guessing where he was staying.  
  
He suspected his sister was involved somehow, but he hadn't even tried to figure it out. He was too wrapped up in his own turmoil to even worry about how mad his sister might be when he finally surfaced again, in time for her next appointment.  
  
A knock—nee, a pounding—upon the door of his hotel room startled him into an upright position. He reached for his gun automatically, even though those days were long behind him. Taking a deep breath, he swung his legs off the bed and opened the bedside table drawer, dropping the gun down on top of the Holy Bible that rested inside.  
  
A second pounding on the door was followed by a raised voice saying, "Paul Kellerman, you better open this door right now."  
  
It was not the voice of his mother, but it was the voice of  _a_ mother, one who was currently raising a charming and obedient genius of a child. He shook his head in disbelief, because it couldn't be possible. He could not believe Sara Tancredi was in San Antonio and beating on the door of his posh hotel room.  
  
He didn't want to believe it. Because this was about to become the showdown of all showdowns.  
  
Before she could beat on the door a third time, he padded across the floor in his stocking feet, rubbing at the back of his head in agitation. As he passed by a mirror lining the small walkway to the door he caught of glimpse of himself, and seeing that his hands had made his hair look like he'd been electrocuted, he quickly stopped and smoothed it back down. He primped a little and then jumped when her fist landed hard against the door again. "I'm drawing a crowd out here, you coward. Open the goddamn door!"  
  
Moving with much more speed and not a little fear, he jerked the door open to find her standing alone. He felt a giggle bubble up in his throat, but he choked on it. He knew if he laughed even a little bit, she might find something to strangle him with and this time no one was around to keep her from finishing the job.  
  
"Sara," he said, nodding his head in some semblance of a formal bow. He didn't know why, but he always remembered his manners with her, usually in a most unnecessary—and thoroughly evident from her expression—slightly annoying way.  
  
"Paul," she sniped back, pushing past him into his room. She had a bag slung over her shoulder and her hair was in a wad on the back of her head, as normal. He appreciated that she hadn't come there all dressed up. She'd come to do battle, and so she was just Sara. No frills, no formalities. No bullshit.  
  
He shut the door slowly and then turned and followed her into the main suite.  
  
She had thrown her bag and sweater down on the bed, and stood with her hands on her hips staring at him as he approached. Truth be told, he just wanted to fuck her and forget all his fears, but he knew she hadn't come there in all her angry glory to let that happen.  
  
And he wasn't really sure if he'd ever fucked Sara. It had pretty much been love from the start for him, and now that he knew for certain it was love for her too, he didn't know why he couldn't grab it with both hands and hold on tight.  
  
"What is the problem?" she demanded, as if privy to his train of thought.  
  
"I don't know," he said truthfully.  
  
"Well, you better fucking figure it out, because I didn't just spend the last 11 hours traveling here so you could say  _I. Don't. Know_."  
  
"I didn't ask you to come here," he said, his defenses up and surrounding him soundly.  
  
"You also didn't ask to come into my life, you just showed up. So I'm returning the favor. If you want out now, you have to say it to my face." Her brown eyes held a combination of fierceness and fear that made him love her even more, and know he could never truly deserve her. And that was what this was all about, he suddenly realized.  
  
"I don't want out," he replied, and dragging his gaze away from hers, he turned and sat on the end of the bed, next to her bag. "I just...Sara, I don't—this life, the one you've made for you and Mikey. I'm an intruder. You just said it yourself. And I don't..." he couldn't finish. He didn't know what he exactly he wanted to say, which was why he'd hung up on her to begin with. "The crux of this is that I do love you, as I'm sure you've known for quite some time, and I think all I've ever wanted was for you to love me back. And now that I know you do, it scares the shit out of me."  
  
She relinquished her angry stance and joined him on the bed. It was a king sized bed, so there was plenty of room for her bag, and both of them, but she sat close to him anyway. “Why?" she asked simply.  
  
"Because." He delivered the word as if it could possibly cover the fathomlessness of what he felt.  
  
"Because you might have to step up and actually be the guy, Paul?" When he didn't respond, or even meet her eyes, her fingers grasped his chin and forced him to look at her. "Because now you might be a husband, and a father, and even though that's what you've been campaigning for, for the last year, you think with the goal in sight, punking out now might be safer?" Her fingers pinched the skin of his throat just slightly. "You have that right. You've always had the right to walk away whenever you wanted. For a long time, I thought you might fly off one of those times and never come back. But not this time. When you left after that last visit, I remember thinking--if I have to give up Linc and his family, that will be the hardest thing I've ever done, but I had decided I would. I would give it up, Paul. For you. Because being with you is what I want."  
  
It had to be an easy thing to say now that she knew she didn't actually have to do it, but even with that knowledge, the sincerity of her words carved out the area where his heart beat strongly.  
  
She didn't just love him. She  _chose_  him. She had selected him, and right now she was following though on it. She'd flown all that way to tell him so. To badger him into it if need be.  
  
"Sara," he said, his voice suddenly thick. "I love you."  
  
"I know, Paul. But what does that mean?"  
  
He swallowed, and then took her hand gently in his own. “It means I’m not punking out, and if you’re serious about it, then so am I.”  
  
He lifted his eyes to hers, the guilt for having made her feel like he was trying to leave her warring with his joy that she had come to fight for him. She looked at him steadily, but said nothing. “I’m sorry,” he finally said.  
  
She smiled, and he knew there was nothing left to worry about.


	7. Post Script drabble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paul's first encounter with Mikey after he and Sara have settle things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot I wrote this, but I found it and thought everyone might like to see it, too :D

When Paul walked into the house on his first visit after Sara had come to the States to solidify their relationship, he notices that he's nervous to see Mikey.

The kid's only 7, but there is some kind of weird adultness in his face at times that makes Paul feel as though Michael Scofield has actually been reincarnated in his son, and he will, at some unsuspecting moment, jump out and rake Paul over the coals for doing Sara wrong in anyway.

"Hi, Paul," Mikey says, gesturing to the sofa cushion next to him. He's already got the X-Box controller laying there, and for Paul to sit down, he has to pick it up.

"Hey, Mikey," he returns. The kid has never run in excitement upon his arrival, and they've never hugged or had any kind of interaction that would indicate affection between them. But this little boy is half Sara, and Paul loves him fiercely, only because that's the only option open to him when it comes to anything Dr. Tancredi-Scofield related.

Mikey eyes him for a moment. "You gonna marry my mom?" he asks as Paul settles on the couch next to him.

_Oh, God_. There are moments when Paul wonders if Lincoln Burrows is really this kid's father. He clears his throat. "I'm thinking about it," he answers truthfully. He pauses, then asks, "What do you think?"

Mikey turns toward the TV screen, and punches the button that starts the game. "I think it's probably a good idea," he says.

Paul's eyes drift towards the TV too. "Yeah," he says, settling back into the sofa. "That's what I was thinking."

 

 


End file.
